Laws of Light: Creating Dimension and Texture

On this video, part of a series “laws of light” by photographer Jay P. Morgan from the Slanted Lens we look at different ways of using light to create dimension and texture.

Light can be used to give you a 3 dimensional feel in what is essentially a one dimensional medium. Morgan talks about how the position of the light changes the look that we are getting from the light on the face of our model – from (as close to as possible) in front of the camera – to just above or below to above in 45 degrees to the side and finally close to 90 degrees from the side.

One interesting tip – it is preferred for some types of shots to use a reflector instead of a second light to prevent creating double shadows which in many cases might look unnatural (this doesn’t mean that you can’t use two or even more lights it is just something to keep in mind).

Finally Morgan talks about texture and how it is effected by light. In a simple yet very convincing demo he shows how a light coming from different angles falls on a wrinkled piece of paper and creates shadows when lit from different angles.

You can check out the rest of the Laws of Light videos we published in the past from this series on this link.